1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to high performance printing systems capable of printing magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) documents, to check truncation and to image replacement documents.
2. Background Art
An existing high performance printing system, for example, a high performance laser printer, includes a printer engine and a printer controller. The printer controller receives page data representing printed pages from a host computer. The printer controller arranges the printed pages for handling by the printer engine to print the pages. A typical high performance printing system includes one or more paper trays for holding the blank paper prior to printing. The printer engine demands that the paper size for a tray be selected from a limited set of allowable paper sizes depending on the printer engine implementation.
In check truncation, a paper check is processed by a document processing system and the paper check is converted to an electronic form. This electronic information may later be used to create a substitute check in a process called check reconverting or to create an image replacement document. It is appreciated that check truncation will eventually be a process in widespread use.
Some existing high performance printing systems are not suitable for printing image replacement documents because the printer engine implementation does not accommodate the image replacement document paper. For example, 8.5 inch by 17 inch return IRD paper is not an allowable paper size and cannot normally be fed and printed by the printing system.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an improved apparatus and method for printing image replacement documents that addresses limitations associated with printer engine implementation.